Visual technique / style: Live-action cutscenes

Group Description

The technological advancements of CD-ROM media and real-time decompression allowed games in the late 1980s and early 1990s to use full motion video, primarily for cutscenes. In an attempt to make games more film-like, these cutscenes soon went beyond traditional animation or CGI rendering techniques and used traditional live-action film making, with real actors, props and sets. Widespread throughout the 1990s, this style of cinematics has now been all but abandoned, with a few notable exceptions like entries in Electronic Arts' Command & Conquer series.

This group collects games with such live-action elements. Note that the live-action footage need not always be a gameplay element, i.e. not all games in this group are necessarily "Interactive Movies".

Limitations:

The live-action footage must have been acquired through traditional film making techniques, using video or film cameras shooting at common frame rates like 24, 25 or 30 frames a second. The footage must also be shown within the game at similar film-like frame rates. Thus, games that feature digitized images of actors that are later animated are not to be included (example: Mortal Kombat);

The games must feature original footage. Sometimes, movie-based games contain scenes from the movie they are licensed from. These games are not to be included unless the footage, while shot during a motion picture shoot, was specifically intended for game usage (example: Enter the Matrix).